Violin Lessons with Théo Payen

"Born in Lille in 1997 to a family of musicians, Theo started violin lessons at the age of 3 and piano lessons at the age of 4. He has studied at the Royal Brussels Conservatory in addition to his Artist Residency at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel - having studied with Philippe Graffin and Augustin Dumay. During his second year in Belgium. His distinctive and remarkable natural talent placed him further up in several tours, having the opportunity to share the stage with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, the Belgium National Orchestra, the Lyon National Orchestra, the Picardie National Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Maastricht Orchestra, under the baton of world class conductors such as Denis Russell-Davis, Paavo Jarvi, Andrey Boreyko, Stephane Denève, or Nikolaj Znaider.

He had the opportunity to perform with famous film score composers Hans Zimmer and Ennio Morricone on his second year of school and had the privilege to attend world class soloists masterclass, playing for Martha Argerich, Augustin Dumay, Mischa Maisky, Marc Danel, Marie Charvet, Nicolas Dautricourt, Frederic Laroque, Alena Baeva, Zakhar Bron, and Miriam Fried. In another style of music, he also played for Plastic Bertrand and performed with the African star Ferre Gola for a musical video watched over 3.5 millions times on Youtube and Instagram.

At the age of 21, he moved up to Paris, having an intense nine months turning himself on to modern and contemporary music at the American School of Modern Music. Following the thoughts of all his teachers, he directly auditioned for the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City and Berklee College in Boston. He successfully obtained an important scholarship for both schools and decided to move to the United States.

In only two years, he graduated from Berklee College of Music in Professional Music, specializing in Performance and Music Business, having studied violin with Prof. Sharan Leventhal. Furthermore, Theo has also been an Artist in Residence at New England Conservatory, where he had access to the violin and chamber music masterclasses. He had the concertmaster position of the Berklee Film Score Orchestra and worked with the Film Scoring department. Here he recorded over 750 movies and 150 video games sessions.

He also covered the leader section position for all the principal Berklee shows, and has been hired to play for guests such as Dayme Arocina, Pinar Toprak (as a soloist), Nan Schwartz, K-Pop band Adoy, producer Rob Lewis and 8bit BigBand. He performed as the concertmaster for the Berklee 2022 graduation concert with Lalah Hathaway, Ringo Starr, Chuck Rainey and James Newton Howard for whom he performed as a soloist.

He has performed in New-York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Bogotà, Paris, London, Geneva, Moscow, Beirut, Guangzhou, and Hanoi, taking part in numerous festivals and private weddings. As a soloist he has performed Shostakovich Violin Concerto 1, Sibelius Violin Concerto and Saint Saëns Violin Concerto 3. In addition to classical repertoire, Theo is regularly invited to play as a soloist for different, more unorthodox ensembles created for special occasions. He is a huge advocate of supporting free music education throughout the world and is an ambassador and active volunteer of an association trying to find funds for Cambodian young children who wish to learn classical music. He is active on Instagram and regularly invites people to take part of his sight reading live sessions.

Theo is currently playing a violin made in 1687 by Giovanni Battista Rogeri."